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Friday, December 3, 2010

Sexuality as Hidden

This zine was sent to me by Zinemonger Distro, a distro that distributes free zines. Awesome! Go check out the site to find out how you can get some!

Sexuality is a big part of many people's lives. Identifying as queer, or somehow "outside the norm", in regards to sexuality can be easy or it can be difficult. There are many factors involved and no two people are ever going to have the exact same experience.

The writer of this piece discusses growing up in a house with a parent who wasn't particularly happy to have a queer identifying daughter (and tried to ignore the whole thing), early relationships, keeping your sexual identity secret from your friends, and if you can still self-identify as queer if you're in a long term, monogamous relationship with someone of the other gender (which reminded me of some of Erika Moen's experiences as chronicled in her webcomic Dar).

A lot of the story was vague, either to protect identities of those involved or because the author wasn't comfortable giving more details (which is fair enough), and I feel kind of bad saying this, but none of the information was new to me. I don't mean to diminish the experiences the writer went through, and I understand that writing about these events can be incredibly cathartic, I think it's just that I've read a fair number of autobio coming out stories, and it depresses me that people still have to go through with that shit. Boo hiss. Grow up world.

I only include website, email, and PO Box addresses. I'm not comfortable printing what could be people's home addresses on the internet. If you want your address included with the review of your zine let me know.